THE
LIGHT AND THE TRUTH OF SLAVERY, AARON'S HISTORY.
Reader, here is the picture of the poor, way-faring, degraded Aaron.
There is clear evidence in the life and history of Aaron, that he has been a slave. Aaron cannot read a word. There are very few full blooded blacks at the South that can read a word, Aaron says.
Now reader, Aaron wants you to buy this book. I don't want you to buy it merely to read it through, I want you to buy it and I want you to read it, not for to lay it up in your head, but to lay it up in your heart, and then you will remember the poor way-faring Bondman. The two-thirds of this little book was made up by the poor way-faring degraded Aaron. The Bible says, faith without works is a dead article.
The Liberty Party is not the enemy of the Constitution. Construed so as to enforce the restoration of fugitives escaped from slavery, and the re-imposition of chains, (and observe it cannot be so construed without doing violence to its language,) the Constitution is an inconsistency, a contradiction; It is made to stab that very liberty which it was designed to shield. It becomes a reproach, a piece of hypocrisy, an abomination. Men will not so construe it, or so obey it; they hold to it, and are ready to spend their treasure and their blood for it, as an instrument ordained to establish justice; to secure the blessing of liberty. They fearlessly put it to every honest man, can you commit that you know to be a most base and despisable crime, to wit, assist in delivering a poor hunted fugitive slave, to the human hyenas, who claim property in his sinews, and then in the broad day light of 1843, justify yourself by pleading obedience to a constitution which bears on its forehead the inscription, "to establish justice, to secure the blessing of Liberty?" No you can't. That would be violating the spirit for the sake of obeying what is really not in the letter, but what the slave-holders persuaded the framers that a compromise was a treachery to liberty, and as much as that the framers confessed in the very act, as the Madisonian papers clearly show. No fine could atone for it, and are we and our children bound to repeat it till the end of time? Heaven forbid.
This is the position of the Liberty Party. It goes to purify the Federal Government, from the taint of supporting slavery, and direct the whole constitutional energy towards its destruction, and this was the doctrine of Washington, who said:--"There is only
one proper and effectual mode by which it (the abolition of slavery) can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority; and this so far as my suffrage will go, shall not be wanting."
A war between the United States and any considerable maritime power, would not be conducted at this day as it would have been even twenty years ago. It would be a war of incursions aiming at revolution. The first blow would be struck at us through our institutions, (meaning of course slavery, that Ishmaelite among institutions.) No nation it is presumed would expect to be successful over us for any length of time in a fair contest of arms upon our own soil; and no wise nation would attempt it. A more promising expedient would be sought in arraying what are supposed to be the hostile elements of our social system against one
another. An enemy so disposed and free to land upon any part of our soil which might promise success to his enterprise, would be armed with a fourfold power of annoyance. We cannot safely stop short of half the naval force of the strongest maritime power in the world.--This will cost at least four times as much as our whole government does now. The Liberty party has a better way; reconcile the hostile elements by establishing justice for the slaves, treat them just as our fathers wished to be treated when they said, "we hold these truths to be self-evident," &c. No matter if the slaves were as bad as they are black, and no sane man doubts that their hearts are at least as white as those of their oppressors, it would be honester, safer, and cheaper, to have them friends than to have them enemies. We may take the side of their oppressors, do their unrighteous bidding, be their humble volunteer slaves, and as our reward obtain their contempt, drain our purse to support them in idle luxury, and our veins to protect them against the just retributions of heaven. But when we go down with them, we and our children into the gulf of national perdition, will it be a very great consolation to us that their skins were white and their ancestors anglo-saxon? The Liberty party regards the fact of the subserviency of our Federal Government to the iniquity of slave holding, a fact written on every page of our history,
Happiness of Slaves.
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so happy that they sing for joy? They sing to make pleasure for themselves, not to give vent to it. Their singing indicates a mind seeking amusement, rather than one content with what it has--a mind conscious of a want, and striving to satisfy it, rather than one rejoicing in a full supply. In illustration of this we insert a fact from Dr. Channing of Boston.
"I once passed a colored woman at work on a plantation, who was singing apparently with animation, and whose general manners would have led me to set her down as the happiest of the gang. I said to her, your work seems pleasant to you. She replied, no, massa. Supposing that she referred to something particularly disagreeable in her immediate occupations, I said to her, tell me then, what part of your work is not pleasant. She answered with emphasis--"No part pleasant. We forced to do it."
What has the Church to do with Slavery?
This depends upon the question whether slaveholding is a sin. If it is, the church of Christ has much to do with it. If it is a sin at all, it is a very great sin. It almost shuts out the blessings of the gospel from a sixth part of our people. It sends a corrupting influence over our whole nation. Look at the 2,250,000 immortal beings used as property, as machines for making money. The evil is too mighty to be seen at one glance. Take a single slave--follow him through a life of hard labor without wages;--see how the mind, deprived of proper instructions, shrinks and dwindles under the whip and the fetter. See how his heart, plundered of its holy affections, is delivered over to brutality and corruption. Go to the slave auction! see human forms, from infancy to grey hairs, sold under the hammer. See human souls bartered away for cash. See families that God hath joined together, separated, never more
to meet in this world. Count, if you can, the groans, fathom the bitter woes, occasioned by these separations. Sum up the
thousands of these scenes that take place every year in the great domestic slave trade. Go along with the chained drove, from the Potomac to the Mississippi. Then again, glance your eye upon the varied shades and features of these unhappy slaves; and see the sure evidence that white masters traffic in the souls and bodies of their own children. Follow out the investigation into its details, and you will begin to learn the greatness of the sin.
But go forward a little further. Follow to the judgment bar of Christ, all the souls that have been trained up in slavery. Before the same bar will stand the American Church. Will not this immense and woful havoc of souls which God created in his image, and for whom Christ died, be one of the first things to be inquired of by the judge? Will not every individual christian be asked, "What hast thou done in this matter?"
Aaron's views on freedom and slavery,
Industry, diligence, and proper improvement of time, are important duties of the young. In youth the habits of industry are
most easily acquired, and the motives to it are strongest, both from ambition and from duty, and the prospects which the beginning of life affords. Industry is not only the instrument of improvements, but the foundation of pleasure. Nothing is so opposite to the enjoyment of life as the state of an indolent mind. Those who are strangers to industry may possess, but they cannot enjoy, for it is labor alone which gives a relish to pleasure. We should fly from idleness as the certain parent both of guilt and ruin. We should never let it cross our path while young. Obtain industry in youth, and it will never lose its hold.
they go to gambling and cockfighting. Aaron's old master and mistress owned eight slaves, and among them was three females. They had to take night about and sit up all night to fan their master and mistress, to keep them cool, after working and toiling all day. Aaron says that if you females remember your brother in bonds as though you were bound with them, and will try to do all that is in your power to deliver them from that sinful indolent life, I long to see the day when the white people live at the South as
they do at the North; not debar the poor African who has to toil out under the hot boiling sun, and depriving them of everything that is just and right in the sight of a holy God.
Aaron thinks according to the reading of the Bible, that God foreknew everything, God Almighty saw that Pharaoh was determined to keep the children of Israel in bondage. God taught such a time that they should keep them in bondage and that time was four hundred years and no longer. If it was right for the Egyptians to hold the Israelites in bonds, the Lord would not have brought them out. Did not the Lord say that he would bring out the Israelites, and bring the Egyptians to judgment. God sent
Moses and Aaron to deliver them, and they were something like twenty or thirty years about it, and it seemed that Pharaoh was determined to hold the Israelites in bonds, the devil made a complete fool of Pharaoh, so that he was swallowed up in water and woke in hell. Pharaoh, he bound the chains tighter and tighter around the Israelites. The poor wicked slaveholder that is living now upon the face of the earth, does not know his right hand from his left in bringing the chains tighter and tighter upon the poor slave at the south, and Aaron is afraid that they will not hearken to justice until the Lord sinks them in sin and folly in the same way he did the wicked Pharaoh. God had a foreview of the white man holding the African in bonds, according to the reading of the Bible, because he says, you may go and buy of the heathen, and they shall serve you forever; and they shall be inherited to your
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it was right for God Almighty to send down his holy Son from above for the wicked Jews to put to death. God Almighty sent his holy Son down from above to preach to the people to tell them the way to fly from iniquity and be saved in his holy kingdom, but the Jews were very wicked and bad like the people now-a-days, they took the holy Lamb and slayed him. God Almighty blessed the Jews with the power, and he blessed them with the strength, but he did not bless them in the heart with that wicked bad deed. Who was it blessed them with that wicked bad deed? Aaron thinks it was the devil that blessed them with that wicked bad deed, else they would not have taken that holy lamb from above and put him to death. Aaron thinks all the Jews that condemned Christ is now numbered among the damned in hell and always will be there until the end of time. All the horrors and iniquity of slavery Aaron has seen in the State of Maryland and in the State of Kentucky, and in the State of old Virginia. Aaron says they do not raise rice there, they do not raise cotton there, this all grows in South Carolina and Georgia. Aaron says that in the last of December they fetch up sugar and molasses, they fetch up rice and cotton, and trade it off in old Virginia for little black boys and
girls, between 6 and 7 years old, and take them down into South Carolina and Georgia, and sell them and get the money for them, and put the money in their pockets. Poor mothers are robbed of their dear little children, and there is not ethram nor anthema said about it. Aaron's views upon half-hearted Christian people standing up in the eyes of their brethren and sisters, and not only in
their eyes but in the eyes of a holy God too, and justifying slavery and saying it is right.
Aaron, how did you feel and fare, for about the first week after you left your master?
O good man, after I and tother slave that come with me took start away from our master, for more than one week, I suffered dreadfully, so I did, cause I all the time did think master's overseers was close my heel behind to catch me, and I liked most starved to death, so I did,--for after I got into Ohio State with nothing with me to eat, and you know I was afraid to stop at the houses where folks was, to beg; so afraid some enemy would catch me, you know, and run me back to master; which I dreaded that most like death itself, so I did.
And dear man, how I lived I don't know, for as true as-you live, I had to creep when it was dark to get where folks did keep their stuff for the hogs to eat, and did eat the very swill, so I did, not as we read the Prodigal Son did in the Bible, because he left his father's nice home; but because I was going to get that freedom which God blessed me, to get that freedom which you white folks have; and don't think much about it. Your white folks tell a good deal about this nation's liberty the fourth of July.
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And folks tell me, when the voters meet to choose the people's rulers to serve their master God in his fear and for the constitution liberties of every body in this big nation; but I guess your white voters don't mean or else don't care much about the poor slaves; because if they did, I guess they would not vote to make the President of the nation out of slaveholders or some men just as bad as slaveholders, if they don't hold slaves; for so the folks tell me, and I guess it's true.
When Aaron was traveling in Connecticut State, I stopped at a tavern in Windsor, along the Connecticut River, it was pretty cool weather. I asked the tavern-keeper if he would'nt be good enough to give me a comfortable straw bed to sleep in for twenty- five cents. Hd told Aaron his customers did not like it when he took in a colored man. I then asked him if he would'nt be good enough to give a pallet in the bar-room, he would not do it, and I had to come away. I went about a quarter of a mile farther, and stopped to a young lady's house. She told me she would willingly take me in, but her husband did not like colored people, and he would only scold me if I took you in. She told Aaron to go to the minister, he was a good, benevolent man, and he would give me a good comfortable bed to sleep in. I went as she told me to, and asked him if he would be good enough to give me a place to lie down in his kitchen, and he would not do it. Then I asked him if he would not give me an old blanket, and let me sleep in his barn,-
-he told me he could not very well. Aaron bid him good night, and told him the Lord would provide somewhere for me to sleep to- night. I went about a quarter of a mile further, and the Lord opened the heart of a white widow lady, and she took Aaron in. I told her if she would give me a place to lie in the kitchen, I would put my hand on my mouth and thank God. I was very tired and
weary--she told me I should not sleep in the kitchen. But she gave me a candle and told me what chamber to sleep in, and I went up stairs to bed,--and Prince Edward never slept in a better bed,--and she and her son made me welcome to stay over the Sabbath. With all his Christianity, he had not grace enough to keep Aaron one night in his barn. Aaron says it did not astonish him none, for Aaron thinks that two thirds of the ministers' heads are filled with the knowledge of the Almighty, but their hearts are empty and destitute of the love of God, as an empty pitcher. They preach more for the money, and for popularity, than they do for the people's poor souls. That is the reason why sin and iniquity so much abound in the land. If these ministers were men after God's own heart, slavery would not abound in the world as it does, but when sorrow and affliction comes against them they will
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preach for two or three hundred, and they will not rob the widow, and the halt and the blind.
On the 9th of May, 1844, Aaron was traveling through Spencer, in Mass.; he fell into the house of ----, was hungry, tired and weary, and asked Mr. ---- for leave to lie down upon his kitchen floor, and understood him yes. He went in and saw his little daughter, whom he asked to lend him a teapot to make himself some tea. Her mother came and looked cross and savage at him, and asked what he wanted. He replied I want to make a little tea. She refused him, and liberty to lie upon the floor, and bid him be off, a black rascal. He went on, but God opened the heart of a good Samaritan, who would not allow him to make use of his own, but gave him of her tea, and gave him a bed to rest his unworthy body, which the other and his wife had not grace enough in their heart to do.
Slaves know when to seem contented. Testimony of James Bradley an emancipated slave:--He bought his freedom in 1832, when nearly 30 years old. In an account of his life in the "Oasis," speaking on this point, he says:--"I do not believe there ever was a slave who did not long for liberty. * * * I was never acquainted with a slave however well he was treated, who did not long to be free. There is one thing about this, that people in the free States do not understand. When they ask slaves whether they wish for liberty, they answer "No," and very likely they would say, they would not leave their master for the world. But at the same time, they desire liberty more than any thing else. The truth is, if a slave shows any discontent, he is sure to be treated worse, and worked the harder for it; and every slave knows this. When they are alone, all their talk is about liberty--liberty! It is the great thought and feeling that fills the mind for all the time." So Aaron says.
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